South Koreans are becoming less open to mixed-race families, according to a recently published poll.

The survey by Seoul-based think tank Asan Institute for Policy Studies found an increasing minority of Koreans have negative attitudes towards marriage with a non-Korean partner.

The number of those who said families of mixed nationalities hinder social cohesion rose to 32.5% last year, from 29.9% in 2012 and 25.8% in 2011. When answering the broader question of attitudes towards non-Koreans, 80% of the 1,500 people surveyed said they felt no aversion to foreigners in the latest poll.

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Kim Ji-yoon, the survey’s lead researcher, said the results show that South Koreans continue to grapple with the idea of their country as a heterogeneous society, an issue that has thrust itself into public discourse in recent years.

Only about 3% of South Korea’s 50 million people hold foreign passports, according to government data, but violent crimes involving migrant workers and foreign mail-order brides have received increased media coverage in recent years.

One of the most high-profile was the 2012 murder of a young South Korean woman by an illegal ethnic-Korean immigrant from China. Ms. Kim said that case brought more scrutiny on migrant workers.

The Justice Ministry said earlier this month the measures were to reduce “abnormal” marital pairs arranged within a few days that result in higher rates of domestic violence and divorce. The phenomenon is best known for involving Korean men who marry women from Southeast Asia.

The Asan survey found that disapproval of multicultural families was most pronounced among women and young people. Over 36% of women, compared with around 29% of men, said such families hinder social cohesion. Around 35% of 20-somethings agreed with that view, closely followed by the over-60s.

Those aged 20-30 were most against Chinese immigrants, while older respondents were more likely to frown on Japanese living in South Korea, likely a legacy of Japan’s colonial occupation of the Korean peninsula from 1910-1945.

The Asan poll, conducted in September last year, also found that about two-thirds of respondents said foreign immigrants are a boon to the South Korean economy and disagreed that migrant workers take away jobs from Koreans. South Korea’s aging society is likely to increase pressures on the government in coming years to loosen immigration laws to support demand for workers.